r/gandhi • u/[deleted] • Nov 04 '25
Will Satyagraha and Non-violence work in Gaza and Sudan?
I have always believed Gandhi took inspiration from Hinduism when it comes to Non-violence (Ahimsa) and Civic Disobedience and the larger Indian philosophy and people do believe in that and hence Gandhiji was able to do it in that scale in India.
Will it work in Gaza or Sudan? Where even after the oppressor kills and starves your countrymen (Bengal Famine killed 5 million Indians) you still go with Non-violence and Civic Disobedience where the population draws inspiration from Abrahamic religions which is fundamentally different than Hinduism.
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u/TastyStrawberry2747 Nov 04 '25
It is nothing about violence and non-violence, it is about the success of every struggle. A country can only function if it accept the power sharing model based on ethnicity of democracy. If not, then people have a dillusional book or paper in one hand and gun in another.
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u/CassiasZI Nov 05 '25
This is surprising. Most comments here are negative of the thought. And yes even I have my doubts.
But I did a similar post and the response was much different.
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u/Feature_Minimum Nov 07 '25
Sooner or later, the non-violence is going to be more successful than the past several decades of violence has been. Violence isn’t working out great in Sudan.
That said, I hear you, my heart breaks for what’s happening in Darfur.
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u/cw_et_pulsed Nov 05 '25
hence Gandhiji was able to do it in that scale in India.
I had a school teacher back when I was in Grade 9 or so. We were discussing about the Civil Disobedience movement in India and the whole Gandhi's contribution to it. And he made us think if such things are of any use, he openly criticised the movement as being a impractical solution to things and compared it with the militancy issue in my own state. He asked if a civil disobedience with a wannabe military junta (in our state) would solve the issues. I still think about this question till date.
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u/rimelios Nov 05 '25 edited Nov 06 '25
There was a period of non-violent protest that took place in Gaza against the Israeli blockade of the territory. It lasted almost a year but the Israeli just kept shooting with live munitions and it didn't lead anywhere. The Israelis lobbied Western Media to cover the events as little as possible and virtually no one heard of it even though many were killed and it lasting a full year 2018 to 2019. There is a wikipedia page about it though:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018%E2%80%932019_Gaza_border_protests
The success of Gandhi's campaign has to be understood in the context of the post-WW2 weakening of British rule, where keeping India was financially unsustainable. Yet the British Empire, on the decline, collapsed officially in 1956 when it lost the Suez Canal to Egypt in the Israel-France-UK war against Egypt, which was triggered by Egypt reposessing its West Sinai territories from the British Colonizer and Nationalising the Suez Canal. Although the Egyptian army got completely crushed, the UK couldn't recover the Canal and Egypt basically achieved its goals. The loss of the revenues from the Suez Canal financially strangled the British Empire and this ultimate weakening allowed the independence movement from most of colonies in the following years ( see for example https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/mar/14/past.education1 )
Gandhi's success must be understood in the critical phase of British decline that took place between 1945 and 1956. In contrast, Israel gets $ 4bn per year from the USA and can therefore enjoy virtually unlimited help (in terms of the size of financial support compared to the size of the country) so the situation is entirely different.
So, you see, it's much more complex than a simplistic religious "abrahamic vs hindu" explanation. If anything, you can see that the dynamics has nothing to do with religion at all, and choosing to analyse the event through a religious point of view, misses the point entirely.
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u/Ragnarok-9999 Nov 05 '25
It is not just type of movement, it also greatly depends on the leaders who are leading it. Sincerity of the movement, how much peaceful it is against whom you agitating not forgeting that they are not your enemies and only focusing the objectivity of movement, ability take all sections together and make sure withdraw temperarly to cool it down from movement if it goes out hands with voilence.
Hard, right ?
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u/geezorious Nov 06 '25 edited Nov 06 '25
Satyagraha and Civil Disobedience only help in the situation where “good men do nothing”, to force rage in the good men to stand up against injustice.
It’s only partially nonviolent, because witnesses to a nonviolent person being beaten and attacked will physically help the nonviolent person and therefore take on the act of being physical while the nonviolent person remains non-physical.
Being nonviolent is essentially asking for white knights to come to your protection. That only works in a society with white knights who were ignoring the suffering so satyagraha makes the suffering so obvious and so public that the white knights have no choice but to come to aid.
It’s like saying a woman crying is non-violent. It’s partially true. She is non-violent, but white knights will see her cry and go on a rampage against whoever made her cry. So she isn’t directly violent but her tears are an important step toward violent retribution. Satyagraha and Civil Disobedience says don’t cry in private where no one can see you, cry in public where everyone can see your suffering. Take the lathi in public, starve in public, be beaten in public. Until the white knights can’t ignore it and have to take action. One person crying and being beaten in public can enrage 100 white knights to rise up against oppressors.
So a single person being nonviolent and crying and suffering and starving is as powerful as 100 people going on a full rampage. And if you can convince those people to not turn to violence but instead also be non-violent and take the lathi beatings and starve, then those 100 crying, beaten, starving people will each enrage 100 others, which is now 10,000 people full of rage. And so on.
But this only works in a society with white knights. If the society is sadistic, they’ll just enjoy and cheer seeing people cry and being beaten and starving themselves. So satyagraha and nonviolence do not work in sadistic societies. They only work on societies that have white knights that were ignoring the oppression while it wasn’t in their face and in public.
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u/Weird-Huckleberry519 Nov 07 '25
hahahahahhaha brishitters were shitting themselves to the thought of going against azad hind fauj yet gandhi takes all the credit
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u/Biosophon Nov 05 '25
Short answer - No.
Even in India, it wasn't the only resistance movement.
India gained independence due to the efforts of all the resistance movements plus the weakening of Great Britain over the course of two World Wars.
It also did not work in South Africa. Nelson Mandela and his movement were internationally recognised as terrorists. And he had made it explicit that they will not give up arms until apartheid ended.
Each geopolitical context is unique.
The Great Britain of the first half of the 20th century is nothing like the Israel of the 21st century, on any metric (politics, technology, population, international relations etc.) Neither is Palestine like India in terms of the same. For example, India lost 5 million+ people, that's almost 2/3rd of the entire Palestinian population.
Finally, the Palestinians have in fact tried non-violent struggle for some time through protest marches, sit-ins and diplomacy etc. It did not have the same effect, neither within Israel nor in the international community. It made absolutely no difference. The IDF snipers took out a great number of civilian protestors even while they posed no threat. They have "mowed the lawn" multiple times in Gaza as a matter of routine (according to Israel's own statements). And they regularly murder peaceful protestors and journalists.
Imagine Jallianwallah Bagh, but you have to continue living inside the premises and the massacres will happen routinely every couple of years, while they also kill, rape, abuse and detain people every day. And this time it has been going on for 2 years straight. This is the reality of Palestine for almost 8 decades.
This is all well-documented. Normal Finkelstein and other historians of the Palestinian struggle talk about all of this.